Indonesia is a far more important country than most Americans realize. It is the world’s fourth most populous, after China, India and the United States, with 247 million people. It is a member of the G20, and is the world’s 16th largest economy, with nearly $900 billion in nominal gross domestic product annually, putting Indonesia between South Korea and Turkey. Indonesia is a mostly Muslim country that began a successful democratic transition in the late 1990s and has repeatedly elected moderate, nationalist parties.

It is refreshing to hear a US government official speak in these no-nonsense terms about this subject (Kerry’s boss Barack Obama has often been less emphatic, what with his ruinous ‘all of the above’ energy policies that make an increasing place for fossil fuels). In fact, the Kerry speech is worth reading in toto and I’ll append it below for the LR folks. He explains in simple language what is causing climate disruption.

Kerry also minces no words about the climate denialists (I’m looking at you, George Will and other Rupert Murdoch/ Fox cronies):

“First and foremost, we should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact. Nor should we allow any room for those who think that the costs associated with doing the right thing outweigh the benefits. There are people who say, “Oh, it’s too expensive, we can’t do this.” No. No, folks. We certainly should not allow more time to be wasted by those who want to sit around debating whose responsibility it is to deal with this threat, while we come closer and closer to the point of no return.

I have to tell you, this is really not a normal kind of difference of opinion between people. Sometimes you can have a reasonable argument and a reasonable disagreement over an opinion you may have. This is not opinion. This is about facts. This is about science. The science is unequivocal. And those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand.”

Kerry is correct that the “debate” over climate disruption is not an ordinary exchange of views and evidence. The “denialists” almost certainly know that they are wrong, and are engaged in dishonest discourse for economic reason. The value of a field of oil is now effectively zero, since it is crazy to get it out of the ground. A lot of people have Exxon-Mobil stocks. They shouldn’t because those stocks are worthless and just do not know it yet.

We need a consumer boycott of major media that give denialists a platform to lie. (After many ignominious performances, David Gregory at Meet the Press is the most recent trespasser against good climate journalism). Just because ‘on the one hand on the other hand’ is bad journalism when one of the two hands is plainly wrong

The only critique I have of the speech in Indonesia is that it places climate change on a level with terrorism and other security threats. It is much more pressing an issue, insofar as it will become the chief cause of those ills the secretary mentioned– of terrorism, poverty, and epidemics. As for weapons of mass destruction, putting that much CO2 in the atmosphere is like blowing up 400,000 atomic bombs every day.

The droughts, heat and sea level rise that climate disruption will bring will displace billions of people and will cause poverty and social violence, including terrorism. Climate change is not a co-equal challenge alongside those others. It is a generative threat, which will actively cause the other problems to accelerate.